What does grief, taxes, and the first quarter portfolio report have in common? Plenty. I discuss my challenge to do my taxes because Dan did our taxes, and to report how I am doing with life without Dan, and my portfolio first quarter report. I feel good that I completed my taxes with Turbo Tax–Dan would be proud.
I also am happy to report that my portfolio has regained all of the Year-to-Date loses and is up $30,000 YTD. Of course, this makes me feel good and helps with my grief of losing Dan five months ago. But what makes me the happiest is helping others through volunteer work and this blog. When I read what my friend Karen and her sister Therese did about with their finances, and the resulting contentment, security and peace of mind that they feel now, made me the happiest of all.

In this post, I share in detail my Morningstar printouts at each of the four weeks in January 2016. You can see first-hand how volatile even my conservative portfolio can get. The news reported, ad nauseum, that the stock market was volatile, wondering if this was a start of a major and long lasting crash. Oil prices sank to ten-year lows, China’s economy stalled and everyone watched what the Federal Reserve was going to do next with interests rates. When oil prices rebounded from $28 per barrel, and Japan’s central bank lowered their interest rates with some folks saying that our Federal Reserve might ease our rate increases from 2 times this year instead of 4, by the end of January all the major stock and bond markets came roaring back. This recovery made a $50,000 loss in mid-January into a $20,000 loss by the end of January.

About

Steve Schullo is a retired Los Angeles Unified School District elementary teacher turned 403(b) reform advocate and author of two books. Steve is NOT a licensed finan­cial or invest­ment advi­sor, and the infor­ma­tion and expe­riences shared as a do-it-yourself investor con­tained herein is for infor­ma­tional pur­poses only and does not con­sti­tute finan­cial advice.

Through­out my blog, I share my expe­ri­ences with finances as an ordi­nary con­sumer, not as a pro­fes­sion­al. Do not start, change or mod­ify your port­fo­lio based on the infor­ma­tion in this blog alone. Any ideas, invest­ment strate­gies, links to fee-only pro­fes­sional advis­ers and par­tic­u­lar invest­ment com­pa­nies dis­cussed in any arti­cle or in my blog are a reflec­tion of my expe­ri­ences and should not be con­strued as a rec­om­men­da­tion. Always con­sult with a tax or finan­cial professional.